9 ms·

We could keep talent if we just allowed people to work here. We don’t. We only allow 65,000 people to work in large corporations, in specific industries, at the

by fogzen 9y ago

We could keep talent if we just allowed people to work here. We don’t. We only allow 65,000 people to work in large corporations, in specific industries, at the behest of the company, under constant threat of deportation and after gambling thousands of dollars on the chance at approval. My friends went back to China because the US is incredibly unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants and provides no reliable path to citizenship or permanent residency besides fraudulent marriage. Why should intelligent hard working people put up with that? At a certain point dignity and a reliable future are more important than the chance at a higher salary. The more developed China becomes the less reason there is to put up with those hardships.

ryanianian 9y ago
This is an excellent point - if you've got a US education, the US should do everything possible to help you stay to use that education in the US. As China becomes more developed, presumably the draw of going to the US to study will diminish (probably rapidly). If the US can't attract and retain top-talent from other countries, the US will fail to reap the benefits of a global economy.
gumby 9y ago
> because the US is incredibly unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants and provides no reliable path to citizenship or permanent residency besides fraudulent marriage. FWIW this is not my experience (GC holder, us educated, mixed south Asian origins). Not saying your friends are wrong, just saying it isn’t inherently unwelcoming, even these days.
- lotsofpulp 9y ago
  In your experience, what is the welcoming part of immigrating to the US? Unless you have family sponsoring you or $500k or $1m to invest, then there is no reliable path to permanent residence/green card. You are at the mercy of an opaque organization that answers to no one and also at the mercy of having an employer willing to take you on and jump through many hoops.
  - gumby 9y ago
    I got a good education and then got a job I was qualified for and got paid well. Which is how the law is in fact written. Sure I hear anti-immigrant sentiment but not worse than in my wife’s country, or mine, or those of my parents’ home countries. I could go on at length at what is fucked up about the US, and I could go on at least as long about what’s great about it. Some things are better here, some are...pitiful. My wife never adjusted to the lower standard of living in the US (the 1% don’t live as well as the 50% in Europe for example) while I found it more than compensated by the work and other interesting things.
    - lotsofpulp 9y ago
      I can't compare to other countries' immigration processes, and maybe the US's process is good compared to others, but I still don't classify it as welcoming. It seems like an extremely beaurocratic mess that served as a political tool that one is lucky to get through.
relyio 9y ago
The process is ridiculously complicated and not worth the time and effort, when it is possible at all. I say that as someone who lived in the Bay area for almost a year and loved it. I had a great job, generated tons of wealth, got full-time offers with generous signing bonuses that I would have accepted in a heartbeat if it was not for the fact that not having a degree makes it impossible for me to get a visa. The process would be a lot better for me if the work visa were simply allocated to the top N people in a priority queue where the weight of each entry is the salary. Zurich, Toronto, and Montreal are my top choices now.
- ryanianian 9y ago
  Optimizing just for salary doesn't add incentives for lower-pay but higher-reward-to-economy jobs (e.g. public-sector, research, etc.). Any sorting criteria is probably going to throw incentives way off. What seems fair is to ban arbitrary "top-N" quotas. If you can get a job that pays you a living wage (such that you don't have to draw from subsidies), then you can stay without hassle. Tax forms generally give all the information needed to make this decision.
  - golem14 9y ago
    Isn't the rationale of the current administration rather the opposite ? E.g., the proposed merit based system explicitly wants to only get the 'top-N' in, whereas your alternative would just deprive upstanding americans from those jobs. I'm not judging either approach, I just want to understand what you propose and how to square it with the conservative viewpoint.
    - ryanianian 9y ago
      > Isn't the rationale of the current administration rather the opposite ? Current US admin seems to strongly prefer giving opportunities based on citizenship (which is arbitrary) rather than saying anybody who wants to work an economic-net-positive job can do so. > whereas your alternative would just deprive upstanding americans from those jobs My stance is to not treat 'american citizens' as being more (or less!) deserving of US jobs. Anybody who contributes to the economy in a positive way deserves the same opportunity. This is a rather extreme stance since it would probably lead to wages going down short-term as there's more job-supply than job-demand. The "gamble" in this ideology is that since you're requiring everyone to be a net-positive to the economy, the economy will thus grow and there will be more jobs as a result.
ashwinaj 9y ago
There is no denying the fact that it's hard to get permanent residency in the US. But immigration should be a two way street, if people decide to stay in the US they should try to assimilate. Is there a "bamboo celing", yes there is; so is a "curry ceiling" and what have you "ceiling". But if you do not push yourself to better your communication skills and other relevant skills required to be successful, you can't expect to shatter this ceiling. This was true for other immigrants too (18th/19th century Irish, Italian etc.) It's hard not to overlook the fact that a lot of would be immigrants make no effort to assimilate and cluster themselves off from mainstream society; especially in a immigrant welcoming area like Silicon Valley. I bet if you were to go to China/India etc., no one's going to go out of their way to accept you. (BTW, I'm an Indian citizen on H1B and I'm saying this, you can downvote my post but it doesn't change ground realities)
- Aloha 9y ago
  The melting pot is what makes America strong. We are stronger together than any of our constituent parts. If you wish to become an American, I wish you all the best of luck (sorry for all the paperwork) and welcome you to our country with open arms.
  - badpun 9y ago
    > The melting pot is what makes America strong. We are stronger together than any of our constituent parts. I am not American, so correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the melting pot metaphor about taking people from different cultures and backgrounds and "melting" them together into one much more homogenous culture?
    - Aloha 9y ago
      Yes - its the Borg concept of multiculturalism - people come here, add their cultural distinctiveness to the whole and become an American by adopting a certain set of ideals.
      - Nearei 9y ago
whatyoucantsay 9y ago
> My friends went back to China because the US is incredibly unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants and provides no reliable path to citizenship or permanent residency besides fraudulent marriage. China is far more unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants and provides no reliable path to citizenship or permanent residency even if one is willing to marry for it. Unless you're very wealthy or famous, it just doesn't happen. It's not easy to be an immigrant just about anywhere, but as closed as the US may seem, it's not even in the same league. The US grants more people green cards and citizenship each month than China has ever.
- fogzen 9y ago
  That’s true. I’m not sure being more open than China says much. Just because we have more open immigration than China doesn’t mean our immigration policies are fair, compassionate, or in service of American ideals of freedom and opportunity.
  - jimmywanger 9y ago
    > Just because we have more open immigration than China doesn’t mean our immigration policies are fair, compassionate, or in service of American ideals of freedom and opportunity. The end goal of any country is to become more powerful. Who cares about fairness and compassion when other countries let people move to you and they don't let you move to their country? Reciprocity agreements would be find. Just because your country is not pleasant to live in doesn't mean you should live in ours.
    - sangnoir 9y ago
      > Who cares about fairness and compassion... (Potential) immigrants care. Attracting skilled immigrants is not just US vs. China (which doesn't really play the game); it's US vs. China vs. Canada vs. Germany vs. ...
- lurr 9y ago
  > China is far more unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants I'm sorry, I thought we based policy on what we thought was right and not what totalitarian regimes in other countries do. Maybe try comparing to Canada or other comparable democracies instead.
lurr 9y ago
> We only allow 65,000 people to work in large corporations per year. There are many many more than that on H-1B. Plus you have OPT and L1. The bigger issue is being on an H-1B kind of sucks. If you get fired you're screwed. It's hard to maximize value because switching employers is a pain. You have people who accuse you constantly of being a low paid scrub stealing american jobs. You have the risk that the US government might pull the rug out from under you somehow. Chinese and Indian people have to put up with this for years. Decades in the case of Indians. > US is incredibly unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants and provides no reliable path to citizenship or permanent residency besides fraudulent marriage. From India and China (and a couple other places, to a lesser degree). If you were born in another country and get an H-1B (which is a pretty terrible system) you can get a green card in a couple years.

by fogzen 9y ago

ryanianian 9y ago

This is an excellent point - if you've got a US education, the US should do everything possible to help you stay to use that education in the US. As China becomes more developed, presumably the draw of going to the US to study will diminish (probably rapidly). If the US can't attract and retain top-talent from other countries, the US will fail to reap the benefits of a global economy.

gumby 9y ago

> because the US is incredibly unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants and provides no reliable path to citizenship or permanent residency besides fraudulent marriage. FWIW this is not my experience (GC holder, us educated, mixed south Asian origins). Not saying your friends are wrong, just saying it isn’t inherently unwelcoming, even these days.

lotsofpulp 9y ago
In your experience, what is the welcoming part of immigrating to the US? Unless you have family sponsoring you or $500k or $1m to invest, then there is no reliable path to permanent residence/green card. You are at the mercy of an opaque organization that answers to no one and also at the mercy of having an employer willing to take you on and jump through many hoops.
- gumby 9y ago
  I got a good education and then got a job I was qualified for and got paid well. Which is how the law is in fact written. Sure I hear anti-immigrant sentiment but not worse than in my wife’s country, or mine, or those of my parents’ home countries. I could go on at length at what is fucked up about the US, and I could go on at least as long about what’s great about it. Some things are better here, some are...pitiful. My wife never adjusted to the lower standard of living in the US (the 1% don’t live as well as the 50% in Europe for example) while I found it more than compensated by the work and other interesting things.
  - lotsofpulp 9y ago
    I can't compare to other countries' immigration processes, and maybe the US's process is good compared to others, but I still don't classify it as welcoming. It seems like an extremely beaurocratic mess that served as a political tool that one is lucky to get through.

relyio 9y ago

The process is ridiculously complicated and not worth the time and effort, when it is possible at all. I say that as someone who lived in the Bay area for almost a year and loved it. I had a great job, generated tons of wealth, got full-time offers with generous signing bonuses that I would have accepted in a heartbeat if it was not for the fact that not having a degree makes it impossible for me to get a visa. The process would be a lot better for me if the work visa were simply allocated to the top N people in a priority queue where the weight of each entry is the salary. Zurich, Toronto, and Montreal are my top choices now.

ryanianian 9y ago
Optimizing just for salary doesn't add incentives for lower-pay but higher-reward-to-economy jobs (e.g. public-sector, research, etc.). Any sorting criteria is probably going to throw incentives way off. What seems fair is to ban arbitrary "top-N" quotas. If you can get a job that pays you a living wage (such that you don't have to draw from subsidies), then you can stay without hassle. Tax forms generally give all the information needed to make this decision.
- golem14 9y ago
  Isn't the rationale of the current administration rather the opposite ? E.g., the proposed merit based system explicitly wants to only get the 'top-N' in, whereas your alternative would just deprive upstanding americans from those jobs. I'm not judging either approach, I just want to understand what you propose and how to square it with the conservative viewpoint.
  - ryanianian 9y ago
    > Isn't the rationale of the current administration rather the opposite ? Current US admin seems to strongly prefer giving opportunities based on citizenship (which is arbitrary) rather than saying anybody who wants to work an economic-net-positive job can do so. > whereas your alternative would just deprive upstanding americans from those jobs My stance is to not treat 'american citizens' as being more (or less!) deserving of US jobs. Anybody who contributes to the economy in a positive way deserves the same opportunity. This is a rather extreme stance since it would probably lead to wages going down short-term as there's more job-supply than job-demand. The "gamble" in this ideology is that since you're requiring everyone to be a net-positive to the economy, the economy will thus grow and there will be more jobs as a result.

ashwinaj 9y ago

There is no denying the fact that it's hard to get permanent residency in the US. But immigration should be a two way street, if people decide to stay in the US they should try to assimilate. Is there a "bamboo celing", yes there is; so is a "curry ceiling" and what have you "ceiling". But if you do not push yourself to better your communication skills and other relevant skills required to be successful, you can't expect to shatter this ceiling. This was true for other immigrants too (18th/19th century Irish, Italian etc.) It's hard not to overlook the fact that a lot of would be immigrants make no effort to assimilate and cluster themselves off from mainstream society; especially in a immigrant welcoming area like Silicon Valley. I bet if you were to go to China/India etc., no one's going to go out of their way to accept you. (BTW, I'm an Indian citizen on H1B and I'm saying this, you can downvote my post but it doesn't change ground realities)

Aloha 9y ago
The melting pot is what makes America strong. We are stronger together than any of our constituent parts. If you wish to become an American, I wish you all the best of luck (sorry for all the paperwork) and welcome you to our country with open arms.
- badpun 9y ago
  > The melting pot is what makes America strong. We are stronger together than any of our constituent parts. I am not American, so correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the melting pot metaphor about taking people from different cultures and backgrounds and "melting" them together into one much more homogenous culture?
  - Aloha 9y ago
    Yes - its the Borg concept of multiculturalism - people come here, add their cultural distinctiveness to the whole and become an American by adopting a certain set of ideals.
    - Nearei 9y ago

whatyoucantsay 9y ago

> My friends went back to China because the US is incredibly unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants and provides no reliable path to citizenship or permanent residency besides fraudulent marriage. China is far more unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants and provides no reliable path to citizenship or permanent residency even if one is willing to marry for it. Unless you're very wealthy or famous, it just doesn't happen. It's not easy to be an immigrant just about anywhere, but as closed as the US may seem, it's not even in the same league. The US grants more people green cards and citizenship each month than China has ever.

fogzen 9y ago
That’s true. I’m not sure being more open than China says much. Just because we have more open immigration than China doesn’t mean our immigration policies are fair, compassionate, or in service of American ideals of freedom and opportunity.
- jimmywanger 9y ago
  > Just because we have more open immigration than China doesn’t mean our immigration policies are fair, compassionate, or in service of American ideals of freedom and opportunity. The end goal of any country is to become more powerful. Who cares about fairness and compassion when other countries let people move to you and they don't let you move to their country? Reciprocity agreements would be find. Just because your country is not pleasant to live in doesn't mean you should live in ours.
  - sangnoir 9y ago
    > Who cares about fairness and compassion... (Potential) immigrants care. Attracting skilled immigrants is not just US vs. China (which doesn't really play the game); it's US vs. China vs. Canada vs. Germany vs. ...
lurr 9y ago
> China is far more unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants I'm sorry, I thought we based policy on what we thought was right and not what totalitarian regimes in other countries do. Maybe try comparing to Canada or other comparable democracies instead.

lurr 9y ago

> We only allow 65,000 people to work in large corporations per year. There are many many more than that on H-1B. Plus you have OPT and L1. The bigger issue is being on an H-1B kind of sucks. If you get fired you're screwed. It's hard to maximize value because switching employers is a pain. You have people who accuse you constantly of being a low paid scrub stealing american jobs. You have the risk that the US government might pull the rug out from under you somehow. Chinese and Indian people have to put up with this for years. Decades in the case of Indians. > US is incredibly unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants and provides no reliable path to citizenship or permanent residency besides fraudulent marriage. From India and China (and a couple other places, to a lesser degree). If you were born in another country and get an H-1B (which is a pretty terrible system) you can get a green card in a couple years.